Orange County and Inland Empire residents pay attention: As a region you are behind in the renewable energy times. Say we measure regional adoption of solar as a staircase with 10 steps. Step 1 means no one has gone solar in your area, step 10 means lots of people have gone solar in your area. Bay Area residents would be sitting on step 7, while SoCal residents who have Southern California Edison (SCE) as their utility provider would be chillin’ three steps behind on step 4!
But it’s not just a simple metaphor! This “staircase” is actually based on a state-run program to encourage homeowners in certain areas of California to go solar. The program, called the California Solar Initiative, helps to pay for part of the cost of putting a solar electric system on your roof in California. Over time and as more homeowners adopt solar, the state program pays less and less of the system cost, because it assumes that solar, with greater market demand and time, will become cost competitive with standard utilities and need fewer subsidies. In short, the state program pays less of the system cost as more people in your region go solar.
Here’s where the staircase idea comes in: the systematic reduction in rebates is broken into 10 trigger points, or “steps.” The higher you go up these steps, the more solar you and your neighbors have installed, but the less of the system cost the state will reimburse.
So, while being at step 4 may be a bit embarrassing for your pride, it means that you, Orange County and Inland Empire residents, get a whopping 30% of your system cost paid for in the form of a state rebate ($1.90 per solar electric watt, or about $10,000 for an average system). SCE customers in SoCal, dust off your pride and seize the solar moment: Take advantage of both the big state solar rebate and 1BOG’s group discount in your area. You may seem behind, but, in some ways, you’re really ahead. And, c’mon, do you really want to let cloudy NorCal kick your sunny SoCal butt in the solar game?
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